0816_TOEFL-Test-and-Score-Manual-1997

Develop and Launch New Products and Services ● 125
Keck’s most famous design is the sleek metal-and-glass flip-top sugar
dispenser sitting on millions of restaurant tables around the world. Based
on the success of the sugar dispenser, he said everything they design for
clients “has to be well styled and highly marketable.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, the company’s six engineers and model makers
worked with many entrepreneurs to design everything from portable eye
washers to battery-operated pesticide sprayers and a shrimp deveiner. Their
tidy model shop is a tinkerer’s dream, filled with rows of lathes, presses,
mills, and saws. In recent years, the company has focused on building bigger,
more expensive industrial prototypes and medical devices.
“We once designed a prototype for a head support used in neurological
surgery,” said Warren Haussler, president and owner. “We watched through
the glass when they took it into the operating room and used to it stabilize
a patient’s head while they drilled holes into his skull.”
The veteran industrial designer said too many inventors make the mistake
of patenting their idea before they find out whether it can be mass
produced in a cost-effective way. Haussler said the patent process is long
and expensive, but having a working model can spell the difference between
bringing a product to market and never seeing it built.
It can cost $30,000 to $50,000 or more to build a working model and
make changes along the way.
“People suffer by being stuck to their patents,” Keck added. “You can
add things to a patent or make changes while it’s being processed, but once
it’s issued, that’s it.”
Company officials said 2010 was a record year, especially in the medical
products area. It is working with a Japanese company to design a tissue
slicer for laboratories. The fees charged depend on the amount of time and
work needed to design and build a model or prototype. Haussler said the
company works with 10 to 20 clients at a time.
Jim Harris, who invented the Shrimp Pro 2000® shrimp deveiner,
worked with Keck-Craig to bring his dream to reality in 1995.
Harris, who is now a commercial real estate developer in Los Angeles,
said he came up with his idea when he was working as a seafood distributor.
His mission was to reduce the time it took to prep seafood. When he
shared his deveining concept to Keck-Craig’s model makers and engineers,
they spent four months, “yelling and screaming” throughout the
design process.